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In Which I Spike The Ball

Now, I’m not one of those people who’s crabbing about the way “Black Friday” has infringed on the sanctity of holidays. Businesspeople have to do something to survive the Obama economy – and it’s the job of each and every person who believes in the sanctity of holidays like Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter to lead from the front, as it were.

But I just wanted to say that after three days of hearing about and seeing people camping out in front of Target and Best Buy waiting for Black Friday in the wind and the snow, and seeing and hearing about people battling each other in the aisles last freaking night, I’m here, on the morning after Thanksgiving; warm, drinking coffee, having a warm bowl of oatmeal, getting ready to go to work…

10 thoughts on “In Which I Spike The Ball”

How long has the day after Thanksgiving been named ‘black Friday’? Ten years? Fifteen years? I first heard the term used by retail workers to describe the incredible hassle of having to work on the first day of the Christmas shopping season. Now it seems to have become some kind of national holiday.
The media people eat this stuff up. It’s like the ‘Holiday airport story” on the local or national news. Send a cameraman and a reporter to the airport. Interview frustrated travelers. Show footage of someone sleeping on a row of airport seats. Wrap in ten minutes, make the viewers and the advertisers believe that you are reporting ‘news’, and collect a paycheck.

Mr. D.-
I didn’t hear the story about the ‘black’ in Black Friday coming from retail P&L until maybe two years ago. Any retailer who only makes a profit in the last five weeks of the year is not a good retailer or maybe only sells gift items.
Mitch-
Yeah, it was a retail in-joke. When did it enter common use, though? There is a wikipedia article on the term, but it is not particularly helpful — other than that it notes that in 1985 retailers in Cincinnati and LA were not aware of the term.

I just heard a reporter on NPR breathlessly announce that many retailers made as much as 10% of their holiday sales over Thanksgiving weekend.
The four day Thanksgiving weekend this year is a bit over 12% of the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Holidays are still about family- for that matter every day of the year is for us – but my daughter landed a holiday gig at the Mall O’ at a place I’ve been referring to as “the chocolate mine”. She was glad to get the job, even though it meant she had to go to work at 10:00 p.m. Thursday night, with her shift ending at 6:30 a.m. to serve those shopping at O Dark 30 (maybe another reason to call it “black” Friday). She was planning to drive herself, but as her father I was happy to drive her to, and pick her up from, the gig. It’s what we do to look out for each other and just another reminder of how blessed we are. Let others complain about things they have little control over; we look for reasons to be thankful.

Holidays are still about family- for that matter every day of the year is for us – but my daughter landed a holiday gig at the Mall O’ at a place I’ve been referring to as “the chocolate mine”. She was glad to get the job, even though it meant she had to go to work at 10:00 p.m. Thursday night, with her shift ending at 6:30 a.m. to serve those shopping at O Dark 30 (maybe another reason to call it “black” Friday). She was planning to drive herself, but as her father I was happy to drive her to, and pick her up from, the gig so she didn’t have to drive through the shopping traffic after pulling an all-nighter. It’s what we do to look out for each other and just another reminder of how blessed we are. Let others complain about things they have little control over; we look for reasons to be thankful.

I owned a retail operation from 1974 to 1984, when I sold it and began programming computers for a living. While the Friday after Thanksgiving was always a good business day, we never used the term “Black Friday.” Nor did anyone else.

I truly believe that “Black Friday” is the perfect holiday replacement for Thanksgiving. Our recent election has pretty much established that our country and the majority of its citizens are only interested in their own betterment. AKA the “entitlement society.”

Therefore, are we really obligated to be thankful for all these things that we should have anyway? The negation of Thanksgiving by an event that promotes even more self-indulgence is quite appropriate. Hopefully, some retailer will develop a system where the consumer need not wait in lines or compete with others in order to satisfy their wants. After all …

In my neck of the woods the term “Black Friday” became synomomous with the day after Thanksgiving about eight years ago. I’m still waiting for someone to question the use of the word “black.”